Baiting

This preys upon the greed or curiosity of a certain target. It is one of the simplest social engineering techniques since all that it involves is an external storage device (1). An attacker will leave a malware-infected external storage device in a place where other people can easily find it. It could be in the washroom of an organization, in the elevator, at the reception desk, on the pavement, or even in the parking lot. Greedy or curious users in an organization will then retrieve the object and hurriedly plug it into their machines. Attackers are normally crafty and will leave files in the flash drive that a victim will be tempted to open. For example, a file labeled "the executive summary of salaries and upcoming promotions" is likely to get the attention of many.

If this does not work, an attacker might replicate the design of corporate thumb drives and then drop a few around the organization where they can be picked up by some of its staff. Eventually, they will end up being plugged into a computer and files will be opened. Attackers will have planted malware to infect the computers the flash drive is plugged into. Computers configured to auto-run devices once plugged in are in greater danger, since no user action is required to initiate the malware infection process.

In more serious cases, attackers might install rootkit viruses in the thumb drive that infect computers when they boot, while an infected secondary storage media is then connected to them. This will give attackers a higher level of access to the computer and the ability to move undetected. Baiting has a high success rate because it is human nature to either be greedy or curious and open and read files that are above their level of access. This is why attackers will choose to label storage media or files with tempting titles such as "confidential" or "executive" since internal employees are always interested in such things.